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Gartner has released its quarterly report on global smartphone sales for Q1 2016 and the data isn’t particularly great for any of the major North American players. Apple, Microsoft, and BlackBerry all saw their market share decline compared with the same period last year, but the news is particularly bad for the latter two companies.

Apple and Samsung continue to hold the top two spots in the overall phone market, with 14.8% and 23.2% of the market respectively, but both companies were off compared with 2015 — Apple’s market share fell 3.1 percentage points, while Samsung’s dropped 0.9 percent points. Huawei and Oppo were the big winners this past year; with Huawei picking up 2.9 percentage points of market share and Oppo moving from 2% of the market in 2015 to 4.6% in 2016.

Lenovo, which had sharply increased its market share in recent years, fell off the map entirely from 2015-2016, suffering a 33% decline in smartphone shipments. Gartner research director Anshel Gupta writes: “Lenovo had another challenging quarter with its worldwide smartphone sales declining 33 percent. Its smartphone sales fell by 75 percent in Greater China, where it faced strong competition from local brands. Lenovo is also struggling to bring synergies with Motorola’s device business, managing lower costs and overheads of the two brands.”

The BlackBerry Priv was supposed to launch a revitalization of BlackBerry, but it hasn’t played out that way yet.

But the news is particularly bad for two companies in particular: Microsoft and BlackBerry. Both companies have bet on high-profile projects and devices to save their smartphone businesses — Microsoft with Windows 10 Mobile, and BlackBerry with devices like its first Android phone, the BlackBerry Priv. Windows 10 Mobile is the well-reviewed platform that no one uses or bothers to create apps for, while the Priv is a pretty decent (if not extraordinary) phone that BlackBerry was hoping would reboot its entire phone division and hardware sales. If Gartner’s figures are remotely accurate, that simply hasn’t happened. Now it’s possible that the Priv simply hasn’t sold well enough to offset the total decline in BB’s handset business, but there’s not a lot of support for that hypothesis at the moment.

Microsoft phone sales have fallen to 0.7% of the market, with an estimated 2.4 million devices sold last quarter, down from 2.5% and 8.2 million devices in the first quarter of 2015. BlackBerry shipped just 660,000 mobile phones and held 0.2% of the market, down from 1.325 million and 0.4% of the market in 2016.

It seems extremely unlikely that either Microsoft or BlackBerry can reverse this plunge and neither company seems particularly interested in continuing to try. BlackBerry has already made noise about shifting away from hardware and pivoting to become a software company, while Microsoft has already announced it will sell its feature phone business to Foxconn for $350 million. While Microsoft has pledged to continue developing Windows 10 Mobile, but the company has reportedly shelved any plans to launch future Lumia devices and it isn’t expected to have a so-called Surface Phone in market until 2017. In theory, this could revitalize the Windows Phone market, but with collapsing market share it’s hard to see why app developers would target the platform.

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I walked into a Bell store and saw the Priv.. I have never seen or heard or viewed a single ad for this product or the fact that it’s android with BBM.. I’ve asked a few long time BB owners if they saw or knew of the product, they had no clue.. WTH is wrong with BB that they didn’t push this.

onstrike112

It’s the carriers too. They don’t want to move BlackBerry Priv units, and the staff they employ are more interested in selling Samsung, LGs and HTCs.

Mel Gross

They’ve pushed it heavily. It’s also been reviewed in a number of places. I can’t understand why you’ve never heard of it.

Ian Skinner

it’s not just me, that’s why I asked some others, no one’s even heard of it. Most didn’t even believe that BB was running android.

G.I.GIO

You, I, and many readers here are exposed to far more phone related articles and advertizing than the average user. Also, the BlackBerry brand is not very popular at the moment.

ATInsider

Research Apple ripoff contracts. The same contracts carriers are forced to sign up for iPhones. They are basically forced to sell iPhones over any other devices or get nailed paying Apple Billions in liquidated damages for unsold iPhones. Quite ridiculous and Anti Competition practices. Yet Saps continue to buy iCrap devices. lol

I desperately want the windows phone to succeed. The UI looks great, but the handsets all look shite – cheap, plastic rubbish. Phone makers would all do well to not underestimate sheer snob value; nobody wants a nokia, or a blackberry.

visomvet

And nobody wants a Windows Phone. Snicker. Yeah, I want them to fail. Desperately.

mori bund

I want them to succeed for the same reason I want Linux on the desktop to succeed.
It’s sad that I have to tell you that, but competition is important for us consumers.
You want a market were Android is the only competitor with just a few percent share for Apple? Good luck with that.
But then you don’t understand capitalism.

visomvet

This IS how capitalism works. People buy what they want. They don’t want Windows Phone. The market has spoken.

Zunalter

Competition is only good if its good competition… just having failing players in the market stick around perpetually isn’t doing anyone any favors.

visomvet

Indeed. And Windows Phone will fail soon enough.

Ascaris

“You want a market were Android is the only competitor with just a few percent share for Apple?”

If it would mean that Microsoft would get back to designing Windows for desktop PCs, that would be a very acceptable outcome. Let people who are in the smartphone market worry about Apple and Google’s market share; I’m not one of them. I am, though, a PC user, and I’m looking ahead to when Win 7’s security updates end, and I’d like to have a usable version of Windows to switch to at that point.

Microsoft’s ambition to enter the mobile market in a meaningful way is leading them to intentionally harm a product of theirs that I like, and have been using for 26 years (in varying forms). It does not appear, given Microsoft’s behavior, that they will be dissuaded from trying to exploit their desktop PC dominance to try to capture that other market. From where I sit, the swift crushing of that mobile ambition appears to be the most reasonable, if not the only route to getting MS to stop trashing Windows. The real Windows, for traditional desktop and laptop PCs with mouse and keyboard.

geforce

then don’t use their os ..

Mahmet Tokarev (Tajik Pride)

I don’t like their “live tiles”. In theory it’s a good idea, but it just looks corny compared to vanilla Android or iOS. It’s too flashy and distracting with all the moving tiles and stuff. It’s also not customizable enough. It’s like the windows 8 start screen. MS needs to concede defeat on this.

Chris MacDonald

I disagree. Having spent the past 6-8 years on android I envy those with windows phones purely because of the GUI; I really think it looks fantastic.

I both agree and disagree with your point about customization. Android is popular because it’s highly customizable, and iOS is popular because it isn’t; they appeal to two different types of people. The windows phone seems to be caught perhaps somewhere in the middle.

SMobius

There is still a lot of love out there for Nokia based on their old pre-smartphone days. Those things were ultra reliable. pairing that brand with Windows which has a …slightly worse reputation for reliability shall we say is not an ideal match. The physical build quality on Lumias is actually better than the crap styling suggests

Chris MacDonald

I don’t doubt the build quality. It’s the aesthetics that suck. I really think that if they made a super sleek, all metal/glass phone then they would do a lot better than they currently are.

Mel Gross

Microsoft has essentially said that Win Phone is in support mode, meaning that no new models will be produced.

It’s over.

Carl

Microsoft were late in the smatphone market, now people only know about the iPhone and the Android smartphones. The market is now so much saturated, and the 2 brands are so established, that there is almost no room for a 3rd party. That’s a shame, as I really like my Lumia 640 XL, it’s got Windows 10 and it’s a great device for its price. Windows 10 is a much better optimised OS than Android (honestly, Android is so bloated an OS that less than 2 GBs of RAM aren’t gonna cut it), it never crashed or slowed down on me (unlike my Android tablet), it’s got the most standard apps like Office, Skype, Facebook and Twitter, but unfortunately very few people bother to create Windows 10 apps. That’s a pity. Hopefully Microsoft will return someday with a Surface smartphone (another stupid Microsoft brand name, just like the Xbox) and make Windows 10 Mobile justice.

They buy android and iPhone because they don’t know any better or they just can’t live without snapchat. I’ve never used a windows phone but bb10 was miles ahead of android or ios in usability. Faster, smoother, better built in functions that you didn’t have to go see if there was an app for that. I don’t need a bunch of apps but some people think they do and that’s what is killing winphone and bb10. Yes I know there are some out there that truly prefer android cuz they want to root their phone etc etc but the day to day smartphone user has no clue about a lot of that crap and doesn’t care as long as they can snapchat stupid pictures and rot their brain and waste their time on Facebook all day. It’s just not nearly as cut and dried as you think. I’m using an android now because I was forced back to it when bb10 stopped being develop and updated. I refuse to get into apples mess of a world since I already fell into androids long ago. Never had any desire for a windows phone. When I went back to android I chose BlackBerry. The priv is an awesome phone and I’ll continue to buy BlackBerry phones for as long as they keep making good ones.

visomvet

Wow, condescending much? “they don’t know any better”. Good thing you’re here to lead us in to the light. Your highness.

medic2003

Not condescending just stating facts. Most people don’t pay that much attention they just buy what the salesman pushes on them and don’t bother to learn about other stuff. Saying people just choose android because they like it is a blanket statement that doesn’t come close to covering all the Android users. I know a bunch of people who know pretty much how to turn their phone on and find snapchat and Facebook and that pretty much ends it aside from using the phone app. They could care less as long as that works. No need to get allouthy over a statement of fact because as I said, most people don’t pay as much attention to this stuff as the people reading this article and commenting on it

visomvet

If people are satisfied with what they got, why would they need to learn about other stuff? What would they get from someone showing them a Win Phone? Nothing. People aren’t that particular, and phones aren’t that different. Win Phone isn’t bad. It’s just not good enough to warrant a switch from the major platforms.

Matt m.

“If people are satisfied with what they ‘got’ why would they need to learn about other stuff?”

Your totally right. I will bet when all your friends started driving cars or trucks you said “No, not me walking suits me fine, why learn a new skill or way to do things”.
You give your head a shake. Or maybe you were born cell phone in hand?

He was making a blanket statement saying people are often too blind to see what else is out there, which sadly is true.
As far as a big complaint on the priv? Price
However. An apple 6s is more. Yet the Priv expands up to 2tb and has the option of using a physical keyboard. Hmmm….. what does apple do differently?

visomvet

A phone is a phone is a phone. What separates them is merely cosmetic at this point. Wake me up when you upgrade from walking to flying.

Matt m.

A phone is a phone is a phone? 30 years ago yes this was true. Did I not just tell you a direct difference between the priv and an iphone? One related to storage the other being a physical keyboard (hardware). Again by your logic one should only drive a basic vehicle for example since user experience means nothing.
Your way of thinking would have never moved anything forward in our general lives.
To compare my statement on learning to drive to flying is stretching it. Back in the realistic world phones and driving are enjoyed by the masses yet flying is a dream most can’t attain.

I respect blackberry for trying to go back to its roots yet be different. This moves things forward in our world. Thinking differently as Apple and others have forgotten how.

visomvet

When stuff comes along that have features compelling enough to be mentioned, people will get to hear about it. But today’s phones are almost indistinguishable from one another. A physical keyboard? Storage? You think people find those exciting? You gotta do MUCH better than that.

Matt m.

So again… by your own logic. Don’t bother to get excited by any idea that isn’t truly groundbreaking or absolutely cutting edge?
Hold on bud. Your in for a world of disappointment in your life.

You forget the iPhone was the first big wow in phone tech since the 90s. If you expect this kind of excitement on a yearly basis you are clearly delusional.

You do realize you carry a computer, in your pocket… wirelessly?

Most everything in our lives is variations upon things. Enjoy it

visomvet

Yes. The iPhone WAS a big deal. Not anymore. Now we have phones that are what, a little faster, a little thinner, every generation. They are all the same. So what if I’m carrying a wireless computer? So does a billion+ other people. You guys make way too much out of it. I don’t expect “excitement on a yearly basis”. I’d settle for a battery that lasts a week. But I know I won’t get it.

Brian Zaynus

Maybe one day your mommy will buy you a new phone and you get to see what all the bigger kids are playing with and what they can do. Until then please refrain from trolling in a comments section about a subject you clearly know nothing about. Perhaps Peppa Pig would be more your style? Have a great day now **** off you are boring the **** out of me.

IqaluitZen Zen

The Blackberry PRIV is a really great device with top end hardware and specs. Blackberry’s problem is that they initially priced it too high and didn’t market it. Marketing costs money and Blackberry is hard pressed to advertise like Apple or Samsung (or Microsoft).

Now that the PRIV is selling for only $400 on Amazon, I suspect more and more people will become aware of it’s existence and it’s now a great deal on a top end phone.

Blackberry is sitting on almost $3 billion in cash reserves and they can’t afford to advertise the Priv? Or would they rather spend it on new software company acquisitions?

james johnson

So are now going to see articles lauding the post mobile Era as we saw when PC’s were on the decline? Of course not what was I thinking. The media loves to bash the PC but the mobile sector on a year on year decline? Nothing to see here move along.

Bruce Banner

The priv definitely isn’t selling in droves, but the 1st quarter figures are nothing to go by. It had a staggered release and was hard to buy. Still is really. Sold out by optus in Australia in a day or two, took about a month to get restocked.

Is a great phone, still not as good at being a BlackBerry as bbos10 device but functions well as an android device with benefits.

Don’t know what Lenovos deal is, Motorola appeared to be doing well but they scrapped it. Maybe the specs were too high for the retail price.

BrooklynTheFurry

The person who wrote this article does realize Blackberry has already said they are sticking with hardware and will be making two more android mid range phones this year right?

penultimateName

Microsoft never marketed the 950 and the others this year. They said this is not the year for the phone. Articles mentioning the end of the windows phone need to realize this has always been about the restructuring of the phone business. I still expect great things from the Surface phone. I just hope Nadella did not make these current moves because of pressure from the venture capitalist that joined the board. He doesn’t care about the long term success of Microsoft.

Mel Gross

Chen has continually revised, downward, how many phones Blackberry needed to sell a year to at least break even. Last year, he said they needed to sell 5 million a year to continue making them. Now, it’s only 3 million. Cutting costs was his reason.

In a recent interview, he said that Blackberry needed to sell phones, because his software sales depended on it for his major customers. It doesn’t look good though. Sales continue to plummet. It’s at 3 million now, which may be why he used that number. But what happens when it’s 2.5, or 2?

As far as the surface phone goes, we can forget about it. People don’t seem to realize that it needed an x86 Atom chip to do what they’re talking about, and with Intel discontinuing the two Atom lines that were meant for low cost tablets, and for smartphones, it can’t be done.

Solaris X

The quicker Windows Phone gets forcibly kicked out of the market, the better chances that windows will revert to a truly desktop operating system sometimes in the far future.

Ascaris

I was thinking the same reading this (and all the other prognostications of doom for Windows Phone). It’s a little bit ironic, as I’ve written in a few discussions that I’m not interested in the smartphone market, in part, because I don’t like Apple and their walled garden (huge walls, with concertina wire atop and guard towers) and its arbitrary restrictions at all, so I would not consider an iPhone. I also don’t consider Android to be fit for purpose with its terrible update system (which leaves it to cellular carriers to package and push updates, which they don’t want to do when they would rather use it as a reason to sell you a new phone instead).

Android and iOS both leave much to be desired, just in different ways, and while I can see the benefit of being able to do one’s computing anywhere, I just can’t see buying in to such flawed platforms (and I haven’t even mentioned the hardware designs that are meant to fail, with short-lived batteries that are glued and soldered in, etc.).

It would seem that we need a serious alternative to both Google and Apple, and lo and behold, here comes Microsoft, promising to bring us just that. Of the three corporations, I probably disliked MS the least (before the “GWX” debacle), and the dislike that I had was a remnant from Microsoft’s unethical behaviors in the browser war.

Like I said, though, that was before GWX.

Needless to say, now Microsoft tops my “disliked” list once again, as they’ve shown that the “new” Microsoft is a lot like the old Microsoft, only now they direct their bullying tactics at their own users rather than their competitors. They’ve turned Windows into a half-phone, half-desktop, all-ugly abomination, and they’ve used malware techniques and deception to trick people into installing the Windows 10 upgrade when they clearly did not want to do so. This, of course, is all part of Microsoft’s “promising to do just that” in terms of bringing us a third option in the mobile market.

So now, an individual (me) who would normally have been hoping for MS to succeed in their mobile aspirations is instead hoping for its immediate and decisive defeat. I’d like to see more competition in the mobile market, but I’m first and foremost a PC user, and given the choice between the two, I am always going to choose the PC.

If MS gives up its mobile ambitions, there’s no reason for Windows 10 to continue in the awful form it is in now. It’s the way it is because it’s meant to sell phones, not please the desktop Windows users that took Microsoft from a garage operation to what it is today. Imagine if Windows 10 had the UI of Windows 7 (including the update system) with all of the kernel improvements of 10… they wouldn’t have to give it away free, and even then resort to trickery and deception, to get to the level of market penetration they’ve achieved so far.

ATInsider

The best mobile platform is BB10. There’s no argument in the world that can prove this wrong. Unfortunately, the company does a piss poor job with marketing, device choices and prices. Example, Priv, Android Based (Yuck), yet the CEO admits he Overpriced the bloody thing lol. ClueLess.

saintmutt

Microsoft works for US govt
Nothing is safe anymore

Chandni Singh

Using BlackBerry Passport and it’s a real good Phone :)

Saad Alharbi

your last phrase was : but with collapsing market share it’s hard to see why app developers would target the platform?

I would say for its 350M pc users already and its Universal Windows apps

tacoma

The consumers have spoken. Many phone brands will disappear. Including LG, Sony, Microsoft, Blackberry, Motorola (Lenovo). Both Apple and Samsung will downsize their phone business by 20%. Because the market is saturated. In future, new and replacement only demand 1/10th the volume of just a few years ago. Hardly any makers will make money, and the lousy return cannot justify the expensive investment.

Look, do you care who make your washer/dryer? No. All you care is you get one for $300-$500, which will last a decade. Today, a smartphone sells twice that much and last only maybe 2-3 years. The profit is huge. In future a smartphone will sell for $200 and you throw it away after a year. 95% of such phones will be made in factories in the third world by robots. The profit is $5 per phone. Even Apple have exited the business.

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